


A Serious Talk

by Makioka



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Discussion, Fictionalised depiction of a real person, Fix-It, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-20
Updated: 2013-01-20
Packaged: 2017-11-26 05:41:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/647161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Makioka/pseuds/Makioka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laurie and Ralph live together- but there are still things they need to sort out between them, and Ralph suggests a visit to a friend with experience in gently counselling people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Serious Talk

**Author's Note:**

> I think this fic kinda gets to grips quite well with one way in which they could sort out their problems. I've got a sequel planned where they go to America to do the same thing for others.

Laurie kneels at the fireplace, heedless of the damage done to his trousers, and ignoring the peculiar ache of his leg in this position as he pokes up the fire a little more, and lets the warmth soak through to his bones. The flames lick up at the meagre allowance of coal, and he wants to remain like this, until a particularly bad twinge prompts him to grasp at the solid wood of the chair and haul himself upright, then sink into the welcome softness of a cushioned settle. He’s become very good at keeping a running commentary going internally cursing the damn thing that allows him not to suddenly start swearing at the damn thing in public. Cold days can aggravate it beyond bearing on occasion, and he prefers to remain in hibernation like a bear. If they want him, they can come get him. 

 

He shifts up his book and starts making tiny notations in the margin in pencil, though even the lyrical words of Virgil are failing to rouse him to any interest today, and every time he moves his leg sends a pounding pulse of pain up the bone, fleeing up his back to die in a tingle at the base of his neck. He’s not cold anymore, but goosebumps still prickle down his arms, and he can’t find relief in any position. When finally he limps out to the kitchen to procure tea, he fills a hot water bottle as well for pressing against it. Sometimes the warmth soothes, sometimes it suffocates, but it’s worth a try. 

 

While he waits impatiently for the kettle to begin its enticing squeal, he collects his mug, and checks the tiny pantry (a cupboard really) for anything edible. The problem of Ralph doing the shopping, is that he follows instructions to the letter and procures what they need, and not even a little extra, so towards the end of the week, the unappetising sight of root vegetables, and the end of the bread are what greets him and he closes it with a sigh, looks at the drinks cabinet and debates a slug of soothing whisky in his tea. Usually he’d decide against it- he knows how Ralph watches the level of the bottle’s contents with hungry eyes, but in the lack of any other distraction this will have to do.

 

Wrapping a heavy blanket around his shoulders, he props himself back up with his book and his tea, wedges the hot water bottle against his leg and tries to read once more, though the words are dancing in front of his eyes, rearranging themselves on the page in front of him, and he wonders if he is actually feeling rather ill, or if the whisky is kicking in rather faster than he’d have thought possible in such a small quantity. He leans his head back with a sigh, and closes his eyes.

 

The next thing he knows Ralph is shaking him awake impatiently, and the room is cold and grey. “Laurie,” Ralph says clearly and distinctly. “You’ve let the fire go out.” Laurie blinks himself back into consciousness and surveys the room. His mug is still held in loose fingers, and the hot water bottle is still rather warm so it can’t have been such a time that he was asleep. Ralph looks like a stranger like this, his mouth thin and twisted with annoyance, and Laurie shakes his hand off.

 

“Sorry,” he says, and makes a face at the way his mouth tastes. “I must’ve fallen asleep.”

 

Ralph’s face is gentler now. “Are you feeling ill?” he says, and he tugs up the blanket, sits down beside Laurie on the edge. “You had a lecture didn’t you?” he asks, and his voice isn’t accusing, just worried, but Laurie flinches further from that, from kindness than he would have from frustration. Virgil is face down on the floor beside him, and Ralph scoops it up, dusts it down a little and puts it back on the bookshelf, his back ramrod straight as always, like even here he can’t relax and Laurie curls further in on himself.

 

It’s been like this too often lately, silence between them, coldness where warmth should be, and Laurie doesn’t know how to mend it. He doesn’t know how he works himself, what inside him makes him spark to life, and Ralph is as much and more a mystery. Sometimes when they’re in bed late at night, and the long smoothness of Ralph is stretched there beside him, hand tucked into his chest, Laurie can only wonder how they came to be here. He loves him of course, doesn’t ever doubt that or debate it. Ralph is part of him, his second self. But your subconscious is hidden, its loves and sorrows buried beneath everyday feeling, and Ralph is there present and real, barely healed wounds threatening to break open if he breathes too deep.

 

He knows Ralph feels it as well, the helplessness of increasing distance, the gulf between thought and execution, and that he too tries fruitlessly and desperately to breach it, mourns their fingers just missing, failing to grasp sufficiently enough to reconcile all. Ralph doesn’t drink as much as he once did, but he won’t stop either. Can’t, not yet he says, and Laurie can’t understand that, as Ralph can’t properly understand that Laurie is not done mourning, not yet accepting what he has lost, and what has changed. They came to each other ragged, and they’re not yet whole.

 

Now as Ralph brings in the fresh tea for Laurie, and a glass of grog for himself (his sole concession to formality) and relays the fire properly, lights it with difficulty- this is generally Laurie’s job, it requires a little deftness with the hands, and although Ralph gives it his best old school tie try it never quite takes off as well. Laurie can’t muster the will to move though, sits there, until Ralph has washed his hands and rejoined him. Then he shifts over so Ralph can sit there, moving carefully so his leg doesn’t jar through, takes Ralph’s ungloved hand in his own, warms it from the cold water it has so recently been immersed in, and wishes it could always be like this, words absent with no room for misunderstanding. Wishes that Ralph’s revolver wasn’t kept oiled and cleaned and at the ready in the wardrobe upstairs, or that Laurie’s own journal read better, more happily.

 

“Laurie,” Ralph says it softly, carefully. “We can’t go on like this.” Laurie’s heart feels like its stopped for a second, and when it resumes he can’t concentrate on anything but the soft heavy thump of blood through his chest. He can’t feel Ralph’s hands in his, until Ralph squeezes with his good hand, hard enough to hurt. “I love you,” he says and it’s fierce and hard, and nothing like anyway he’s ever said it before. “I want you to be happy, not just to exist with me.” The way he says it, it’s like he’s already drawing himself back, preparing with every fibre for Laurie’s inevitable exit, and Laurie can’t take that.

 

“It’s not just existing,” he says, and the weight in his throat is heavy enough to drag him down. “I just don’t want you always to be ready to leave, to be trying to decide for me what is best.” In the moment he says it he knows it’s the truth, though it hadn’t come to the surface until this second. It’s like this has made a dent in the hard surface surrounding them.

 

Ralph hardly seems to have heard. “I have a friend,” he says hesitantly. “He’s recommended somebody for us to talk to, if you’d like us to go together. He’s helped a lot of people, not just those returning from the war, but in general with all sorts of things. We could talk to him about this.” 

 

Laurie stared at their hands, so tight together, so close to ending, and nods his head, once, sharply. “Yes,” he says softly. It won’t help, he knows that, but if this is what it takes, he’ll do it. For Ralph.

//

He thinks as they sit in the cold waiting room, close enough to share a little warmth that this was a poor idea. He hadn’t liked the man who had introduced himself briefly as ‘Jeremiah’, before disappearing to do something or the other, hadn’t trusted him in the least even in the brief moment that they’d spoken, and hadn’t liked the research cards in his hands. But his pride rebelled at just walking out without even giving this a shot. Perhaps his dislike would be turned to good effect in driving him closer to Ralph. When they’re ushered in to sit on the slightly raised platforms- and he sinks into a chair too deep for him to rise easily or comfortably from, the regret turns to an outright wish to leave. 

 

Jeremiah is aggressive, but he’s almost preternaturally provided with the facts. Crossing one leg he asks them, eyes focused and intent, how long they’ve been together. Laurie looks around him at the old fashioned lecture theatre, filled with rows of what he presumes are students, all looking at him curiously, and is reminded that they have been assured absolute discretion. Ralph answers for him, and Laurie wants to be sick. How can this help anything, he thinks wildly, thinks of punching Jeremiah in the face and making his escape. At the edge of his vision, a uniformed man shifts pointedly, and he doubts that he’d get away with that. 

 

Now Jeremiah is pouncing greedily on the facts. “Ralph,” he says, and his teeth show cruel and white beneath the thinness of his lips. “You drink too much is this right? Don’t be shy, don’t be ashamed. I’m here to help. You just need to tell me the truth. I understand after all. It’s something that’s touched my own life deeply,” and he gives them both a look that is presumably meant to be sympathetic, and is just on the wrong side of wolfish.

 

For some bizarre reason, their audience breaks into applause at that, and Ralph, _Ralph is replying._ Laurie wants to shake him, but he wants to hear his answer more. “Yes Jeremiah,” Ralph says.

 

“The war was it?” Jeremiah says, probes with ruthless dirty fingers, and the audience lets out a soft chorus of sympathy.

 

“Yes,” says Ralph wretchedly. “Perhaps a little before. Something to do, a way to blot it all out,” he’s breathing heavily Laurie notes distantly. Jeremiah is nodding pseudo-sympathetically at it, then cuts him off with a wave of the hand. 

 

“Time,” he says, “to meet Ralph’s partner Laurie. How has Ralph’s drinking affected _you_ Laurie? Can you trust him? Does he get violent with you? Is he your baby daddy or is that Andrew?” He glances at the cards. “Scratch that last one ‘til later. Well Laurie?”

 

Laurie can barely muster words in his horror. “It’s nothing like that,” he says, as calmly as he can, wants to clear Ralph of these imputations. “He’s a good man, the drinking is different from that.”

 

“We’ve heard it all before,” Jeremiah says. “You can tell _us_ the truth Laurie, since there’s things you both have to confess to each other aren’t there?” His eyes are hungry now, like he wants to search out every detail, put it on display like a butterfly with a pin through it, dissecting their worst thoughts and emotions. “You’re still in love with Andrew aren’t you? Do you want to _tell_ Ralph that, Laurie? Do you have something you need to absolve yourself of?”

 

The relentless barrage of questions batters at Laurie impossibly hard, and he can’t find the words to respond, turns and sees Ralph’s eyes, bleak and despairing, as though he thinks he’s hearing the truth. It gives him strength to cut through a little. “I don’t love Andrew like I love Ralph” he says, and he’s mildly surprised to find that it’s true. He’s known it’s true for a long time, and he knows Ralph will understand. Jeremiah seizes upon his phrasing though.

 

“But you _do_ love Andrew,” he says triumphantly. “Which adds a whole new layer to this ladies and gentlemen. We couldn’t get Andrew here tonight, but we have someone else to help us find out the truth. Can we please welcome Nurse Adrian?”

 

Laurie can’t be surprised by anything anymore. He supposes Ralph has organised this, though he can’t imagine why. Nurse Adrian is escorted onto the stage, and the first thing he notices is how very pregnant she is, and he wonders wildly why she hadn’t told him in her last little note about this. Remembers the solid schoolgirl writing talking about small things, the wedding she was going to, not a mention of her presumable disgrace. There’s no ring on her left hand, and he can’t help but focus on that. Jeremiah hands her to a seat, crouches down at her knee and stares upwards.

 

“Nurse Adrian,” Laurie says rather wildly, feels stupid calling her that, but they’re the words that spring easiest to mind. 

 

Jeremiah leaps in easily and smoothly. “You’ll have your chance to speak Laurie. But it’s my name on the wall”- he gestures to the small plaque affixed to the old walls of the building. “And it is _my_ problem with gambling that allows me to speak honestly and frankly about the position that this poor woman is in because of _you_.” Laurie attempted to speak, but was shouted down. “This lady is carrying your child Laurie. You just had to try and out-do Ralph didn’t you? Had to prove that you too could try with a woman.”

 

Ralph speaks up, “how could you Laurie?” he says, and there’s a deep and cutting sadness in his voice, and Laurie realises for the first time that Ralph can believe this, as he’ll believe anything that hurts.

 

“I didn’t,” he begins to say, and Jeremiah is there right beside him. “The blame isn’t all yours Laurie,” he says. “It’s not like that nasty case of VD that you, your lady friend and Ralph all have didn’t come from somewhere after all. You slept with Bunny, Ralph and you didn’t ask too closely what he’d been doing (or who for that matter) so really the blame is yours.”

 

And it’s that, that jolts Laurie out of the nightmarish world he’s been inhabiting, that and his lukewarm tea spilling all over him as he sits upright with a shout that belongs on the beaches of Dunkirk, not the environs of Oxford. “Fucking Christ,” he says, and he doesn’t know if it’s the leg or the dream he just had that prompted it. He pokes up the fire again with trembling hands, and puts on a log. When Ralph comes in, he’s at the door ready to embrace him, fiercely though he won’t say why. 

 

“We have to talk,” he said steadily. Anything to avoid that particular future. He also made a mental note to telephone Nurse Adrian when he got a chance. Just to make sure.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, yes they are on Jeremy Kyle. If you don't know what Jeremy Kyle is, this clip will clear everything up (it's Charlie Brooker analysing a little bit of it) http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=3whHmKPfkFQ#t=374
> 
> The sequel will be 'The Laurie Springer Show'. You become what you hate.


End file.
